摘要：The technological tendencies concentrated on the production of functional food and restructuring active compounds such as anti-oxidants, vitamins, amino acids, minerals and even small molecules, such as cell, enzymes and probiotic microorganisms which are beneficial for the health, and thus the preservation in food during processing and storage. These advantages of recent technological tendencies of alginate fused together in the technique of microencapsulating, resulting in a final product which protects the compounds encapsulated by adversary factors, such as heat and moist, thus improving their stability and their bio-availability. To obtain these capsules are used as encapsulant material alginates, plant gums and other carbohydrates. The aim of this study was to review the alginate microencapsulation techniques for food applications. For preparing calcium alginate microcapsules into food applications, there are techniques such as: extrusion, emulsion and spray drying. The techniques of microencapsulation using alginates allow the protection of various active ingredients, such as proteins, amino acids, vitamins, extracts, flavours, enzymes and microorganisms which come into contact with the environment and thus are subject to degradation and loss of its nutritional properties and health benefits. Alginate is a polymeric material suitable for microencapsulation because the product is easy to handle and use, non-toxic and biocompatible. These aspects were described in the scientific literature underlining the prebiotic effect of alginates and the benefits of the daily con tribution in fibres, with the purpose of reducing the level of blood cholesterol and sugar, as well as the capacity to extend the lifetime o f products. The paper presents own research concerning the microencapsulation of strawberry juice and sea buckthorn oil in sodium alginate. The characterization of the obtained capsules was performed using electron microscopy (SEM).
